A little history, from Wikipedia
"The 1947 Act (the Town and Country Planning Act), in effect, nationalised the right to develop land. It required all proposals, with a few exceptions, to secure planning permission from the local authority, with provision to appeal against refusal. It introduced a development charge to capture the planning gain which arises when permission to develop land is granted. This was abolished by the 1954 Town and Country Planning Act passed under subsequent Conservative government.
That such development charge should be abolished by a Tory government surprises me not in the least. However it remains a fact that it was an essential part of the architecture of the original act by which the concept of planning permission was introduced and the concepts of building land as distinct from agricultural land were invented.
I think it is time this charge was reintroduced: there is no moral, philosophical or logical reason why the windfall gain caused by a decision of the state should accrue to anyone other than the state. There is an argument that the gain in land values should accrue to the original owner from whom it was taken in 1947, but that would be wholly impractical to implement. As the system stands, it is an incitement to corruption. The person supplying the necessary permission does not benefit from that supply, neither does their employer, whereas the person to whom the permission is supplied benefits greatly and so has a great incentive to make it worth the while of the person giving the permission. Nor would there be any negative effects of reintroducing this charge. The landbankers, sorry, developers, would lose a large share of their profits, but otherwise things would go on as normal. The huge boom in housing in the 1930s which gave us the benchmark house for house prices, the three-bed semi, which took place before the Act was passed, shows that development would not be slowed down. If anything, it would be made easier, as councils would be keen to allow development in order to boost their coffers with the charge.